Sunday, June 15, 2008

You are too sensitive, or, are you?

As you can read from my comment on Yun's post, I think that it is very difficult to decide without bias.

Many people are born with various kind of allergies and phobias. To name a few, some people are allergic to seafood, some are allergic to weather; some are scared to death when they are trapped in an elevator and some think that spiders are as scary as monsters.

We are much more forgiving in these situations because we know the causes of these symptoms and we know that they don't have a choice.

Sometimes our friends are sensitive to things that we deem very normal and we think that they are just too sensitive.

Is that so?

While the causes of allergies and phobias are physiological, sensitivities usually have psychological roots.

For example, if you break up with your lover at some chained restaurant, you may never want to go to any of them again. It is very normal for you to do that but you friends will find it hard to understand if they don't know the story behind it.

And the thing is, we, naturally, seldom want to tell people about our sad stories because we don't want the bad feelings to come back. To my mind, this is one of the reasons why they are so many misunderstandings in our world.

My high school friend once said

"Everybody has a story."

Next time you find your friend's sensitivity hard to understand, attribute it to a story behind his/her back. Maybe you never have a chance to know what the story is but it would make it easier for you to forgive :)